Show HN: Remotely use my guitar tuner
243 points by smith-kyle 4 days ago | 56 comments

eranation 16 hours ago
Linking it here since it's easy to miss. It seems he is using the popularity of this to help a friend recovering from brain surgery, I think this makes this project even more awesome in my book.

https://smith-kyle.github.io/

reply
999900000999 16 hours ago
Donated. I always thought Playboy manbaby was a solo act nerdcore rapper.

But this is cool.

reply
eranation 16 hours ago
Thanks! Donated as well. When I grow up I want to have friends that will do the same to me...
reply
stavros 8 hours ago
When you grow up you should want universal healthcare...
reply
999900000999 8 hours ago
Americans don’t want that.

We want to live in hell where any serious illness will completely ruin you.

reply
schinken23 10 hours ago
Do you guys know this? https://www.thomann.co.uk/stompenberg_devices.html

You can use real pedals over the internet

there's a german blog post about this: https://www.amazona.de/thomann-stompenberg-fx/

reply
TrackerFF 19 hours ago
Thomann had (still have?) this thing called "stompenberg", where they put up some mechanical switching system so that you could play audio files through the actual pedals in the system, and turn on the knobs / parameters.

In the recent years some smaller businesses have started to offer outboard gear in this way. You upload some stem, and can process it through their hardware remotely, and get back the results.

reply
hunter2_ 17 hours ago
This is cool except that the only ad for this I've come across so far was for analog summing. Remote or not, that concept (going out of one's way to theoretically have something more pleasing than digital summing) always smelled like a scam to me. Like ok, maybe a sample rate a hair above what Shannon/Nyquist demand can't do digital summing with all the right IM distortion of the missing supersonic content or whatever, but 192kHz ought to solve for that! So is it something else to be gained via analog summing?
reply
Nition 14 hours ago
Oh the options get way better than that. Check these guys out: https://accessanalog.com

They have 60+ rack units with little robot grabbers physically controlling the knobs.

Re analogue summing, yeah it does near nothing in reality. What you're missing though is that what people actually want with analogue summing isn't really technically better sound but technically worse sound. Analogue gear might have a little bit of harmonic distortion, a little bit of crosstalk between channels, certain transformer characteristics etc that theoretically make it sound more glued together or warm etc etc. But ultimately summing is summing and those differences vs. digital are very small (and won't always contribute positively either).

reply
peepee1982 14 hours ago
I'm not interested in analog summing myself, but I think you're missing the point. It's not about "better" summing. You want more euphonic summing. Analog audio processing often comes with artefacts that give the signal sent through it a more pleasing character, for whatever reason (phase shift, saturation, channel differences between left and right, transient modulation, slew rate, power sag, etc.).

I personally think analog summing is a waste of time, because the differences are too subtle to be worth the investment in setting it up. But that's just my opinion. Some people are really into it (Eric Valentine comes to mind).

Just wanted to point out that in the context of audio equipment (both professional and audiophile) "sounds better" often means "sounds worse but more engaging". Just like a polaroid picture often evokes more emotions than a photo taken with a modern digital camera and a great lens.

reply
smith-kyle 16 hours ago
No way! My friend and I were half joking about building that as a sequel to realtuner. If nothing else, it'd be a great excuse to buy more gear.
reply
sagacity 10 hours ago
Do you really need an excuse to buy more gear? meme-be-honest.jpg
reply
copperx 19 hours ago
This is awesome, and, at the same time, hilarious. The BOSS tuner is the laggiest thing ever, and we're adding network latency to it!

Maybe we all can pitch in for a Turbo Tuner. Or some vintage mechanical strobe tuner for hipster points!

reply
smith-kyle 19 hours ago
Let's scale horizontally!
reply
behehebd 8 hours ago
As the actress said to the bishop
reply
dbdr 13 hours ago
On Firefox/Linux, after allowing mic access, I get a "Failed to access microphone" above the button, and in the javascript console:

[ws] Microphone error: DOMException: AudioContext.createMediaStreamSource: Connecting AudioNodes from AudioContexts with different sample-rate is currently not supported.

reply
cammikebrown 13 hours ago
Sounds like normal Linux behavior to me
reply
locusofself 13 hours ago
I love it.

But in all seriousness, if you are looking for a good guitar tuner, a lot of the ones on the market are actually not very good.

I highly recommend TC Electronic for clip-on tuner, or Sonic Research or Peterson for pedal tuners.

source: playing guitar for 32 years

reply
lenwood 4 hours ago
Agree that most leave something to be desired. TC Electronic polytune is great and I also use the pedal to mute my signal. I'm surprised to say this, but my favorite tuner is the one in the L6 Helix.
reply
dsego 10 hours ago
I use a Peterson strobe tuner on my smartphone, it's really good. I've also coded my own strobe tuner to learn more, unfortunately no mobile version yet.

https://github.com/dsego/strobe-tuner

reply
eternauta3k 13 hours ago
Could you go into more detail on why they are bad?
reply
locusofself 52 minutes ago
Innacarute, jumpy, slow response.

The most popular tuner of all time is the BOSS pedal, and the LED lights are too far part from eachother, it's simply not granular enough to really get in tune to my ears.

Stroboscopic tuners are the way to go

reply
nosioptar 3 hours ago
In my experience, electronic tuners suck at accurately detecting the note played.They often pick up harmonics as the note.

The low b on my 5 string bass is often identified as an f by electric tuners.

They also just aren't very accurate when they do detect the right note. I've never used a tuner where my cello is actually in tune when it says it is, always requires tweaking.

reply
bob1029 12 hours ago
The oboe playing a concert A is a pretty good one too.
reply
locusofself 51 minutes ago
There is something magical about hearing an orchestra all tune up to eachother
reply
Humphrey 13 hours ago
I love my TC Electronic clip on tuner!
reply
locusofself 53 minutes ago
For $49 it's very, very good
reply
jsd1982 6 hours ago
Very cool idea, but unfortunately the browser doesn't allow users to select which channel of their audio interface to use as input. So unless you're plugging your guitar into input 1 this doesn't work out. I have my microphone in input 1 and my guitar in input 2.
reply
redbluething 19 hours ago
I am not sure why this exists, but I am glad it does.
reply
hshdhdhj4444 18 hours ago
The website explains why this exists.

> Real guitarists use real tuners.

reply
wr639 3 hours ago
I have a tuner that attaches to the head of my guitar. I am not sure when I would need something like this.
reply
hunter2_ 17 hours ago
On my Pixel 10 using Chrome, it says "Mic needed - refresh to allow" but refreshing doesn't change anything. It's possible that I did something years ago to prevent whatever permission popup might normally be offered?
reply
smith-kyle 17 hours ago
Your browser might have microphone access set to "Deny" by default rather than "Ask". This happened to my friend. He changed the setting and it worked, but maybe there's a way to give a more helpful error in this scenario. Let me see
reply
nosioptar 17 hours ago
Got the same, Firefox on lineageos.
reply
Benjamin_Dobell 8 hours ago
Thanks. Just tuned my daughter's guitar.

Obviously a bit more work. But it'd be pretty neat to have live reactions. "So close!", "Nearly there", "You can do it!", "Perfect" etc.

reply
pastorhudson 17 hours ago
This is hilarious and fun. Thanks for making it.
reply
cluckindan 19 hours ago
You keep your tuner in a terrarium?

”This appliance must be earthed”?

reply
Havoc 17 hours ago
That’s some serious out of the box thinking
reply
anemoknee 19 hours ago
this is hilarious. and surprisingly responsive! i used this to tune an acoustic bass guitar i have
reply
Johnny_Bonk 18 hours ago
Unbelievable, thank you and can you add open g or drop d tuning pweez?
reply
post-it 16 hours ago
Can't it already do those since it's chromatic?
reply
LouisLazaris 16 hours ago
I guess he would have to add a way to interact with the tuner's UI to switch to a different setting other than standard tuning.
reply
sunnybeetroot 16 hours ago
It’s a chromatic tuner, there is no other setting
reply
LouisLazaris 16 hours ago
Ah yes, my bad!
reply
rhaps0dy 16 hours ago
Thank you, this was fun, I sang notes for a bit :)
reply
zoklet-enjoyer 18 hours ago
This reminds me of the Internet of my childhood. People just having fun and experimenting with a new medium. Thank you for sharing.
reply
sealthedeal 6 hours ago
love this, just tuned up a guitar.
reply
koinedad 19 hours ago
Pretty wild, nice job
reply
behehebd 8 hours ago
This guy tunes!
reply
CodinM 12 hours ago
Tuned my guitar and donated 5$!
reply
austinjp 18 hours ago
\m/
reply
yukapero 12 hours ago
Tried it, dope idea. No Pi or tuner req'd really. Why we all love these goofy hacks so bad
reply
behnamoh 14 hours ago
Guitar tuner as a service was not on my 2026 bingo card but here we are. Creative project!
reply
closetkantian 17 hours ago
I love it
reply
Forgeties79 18 hours ago
I just used it to check my whistle tones. How fun!
reply
sponno 14 hours ago
sooo cool!
reply
pcdoodle 7 hours ago
[dead]
reply